Long overdue but about
three weeks ago, on November 17th, I spontaneously hopped
on a train to Cologne to see The Neighbourhood at the sold out Gloria
Theater. Let me tell you one thing straight ahead, they made it worth it all.
When I got to the venue at
around 5:30PM, there was already a huge line of girls queueing to get
into the venue. Occasional screams echoed down the street whenever
the door of the tour bus, parked right in front of the building,
opened and someone hopped in or out of it.
The point the doors
opened at 7PM, the girls went utterly mad and started sprinting
towards the entrance. It was quite a sight.
Once inside, there wasn't
much time left till the support act would hit the stage since going
into the venue took ages. If that was due to security staff being
overwhelmed with their duty or the girls being too impatient and
interfering with their work is hard to tell, it was probably a lot of
both.
Tunji Ige [6], a rapper
from Pennsylvania, had quite a hard time getting to the crowd who
were only interacting with the artist for the most part whenever he
mentioned the headliner band. Nonetheless, some of his tracks got the
room to jump along and dance for a while, but only for a short amount
of time. After about 30 minutes, he and his accompanying DJ leave the
stage again to make way for the main act.
As the stage gets
prepared, not much has to get changed and it all remains pretty much
the same. There's no back drop. No extensive lights. No huge
production. All things viewable are the instruments and a couple of
mics. Minimalism and simplicity as we know it from The Neighbourhood
guys.
The Neighbourhood [9] open
with the thundering intro of Ferrari, a new track from their just
recently released record Wiped Out! (you can check out my review of
it here: |x| ), but don't got further into the song than that and
instead smoothly go into What Do You Want From Me.
The show gets played with
hardly any talk sequences in between, which is much to my personal
liking as the whole performance seems a lot smoother due to that. All
tracks flow smoothly into each other and trap you further in their haunting and mezmerizing performance, no matter if they go from a
more playful Prey into a slow Baby Came Home, or back from Daddy
Issues into a more upbeat Female Robbery.
There's a bigger rumble of
dislike going through the crowd as the band gets to the experimental
and instrumental part of Wiped Out!, I personally loved that certain
part the most as the focus is solely on the music and the track is
also one of my favorites off of that new record.
As it has to be, Sweater
Weather found a place in the setlist, too, as the second to last
song. The crowd goes mental to the band's biggest hit up-to-date. No
matter what though, it is a solid track and it is after all what
brought them to a bigger audience. It is also clear that the most
part of the people that night were only waiting for this to be
played.
Despite that, they decided
to go out with another bang instead of letting Sweater Weather fade
and close up their show with RIP 2 My Youth.
A special shout out at
this point to the band's FOH guy and light engineer because the sound
and visuals were nothing short of stunning, working perfectly well
with the band's concept of minimalism.
Here is the complete
setlist:
Ferrari Intro
W.D.Y.W.F.M.
Let It Go
Wires
Prey
Baby Came Home
Afraid
Daddy Issues
Female Robbery
The Beach
Wiped Out!
Warm
Sweater Weather
RIP 2 My Youth
Personally, from their
debut I Love You, Staying Up was definitely missing, and as far as
their newest record is concerned, I would've loved to hear Cry Baby
and Single. But the show was beautiful nevertheless, worth the travel
and surely worth experiencing again.
The Neighbourhood will be
back in Germany in March 2016 for their Underwatour, check their
website for all tour dates: |x|
Listen to their latest
release Wiped Out! on Spotify and buy it at a record store near you!
Cheerio xx
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